Speculative Fiction—an all-encompassing genre created to describe stories of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and other stories that have an element of “What if...” in them. A story in speculative fiction is one that adds an element of the unreal, or asks, what would become of our society if history took a different direction at some important event? Fiction with a little something extra thrown in.—William D. Richards

The Hugo categories are based on paper publishing. With more and more
writing and art ending up on the internet, in shapes not constrained by
publishing houses, shipping, printing and paper, the categories are
getting less and less relevant in the light of what is created and what
people actually read.

Do the Hugo categories need to change? Do the categories reflect what
you read and watch? How do we create a set of categories that get enough
nominations and votes, but still mesh with the historical traditions?

Do we need to rethink the traditional fiction formats based on length?
How about Best Related Work, which used to be called Best Non-Fiction
Book, but now is used to nominate among other things internet platforms,
larps, pods, scientific papers and internet essays - do we need to
split it into (at least) two? The recent influx of non-fictional future
speculations in blogs, articles, TED talks and lectures: are they
relevant and pervasive enough that a future category should be
discussed? Why do the zines categories assume periodicals with issues?
Where is art published - does it need to appear in print?

Unless we think about change now, the future could take us by surprise.

What is the current state of machine translation? The rough-n-ready web
page translation provided by Google, the apps you speak into, film
dubbing/sub-titling, and translating SF books themselves all present
unique technical challenges. If machine translation is commonplace, will
fewer people learn English (or Chinese) as a lingua franca, and will
the American cultural steam-roller's effects be reduced? We’ll also look
at the risks and benefits of translation making foreign countries less
foreign to visitors.

Blogging/vlogging about books has caused some recent controversy. Some
authors have claimed bad reviews in book blogs have resulted in poor
sales. Book bloggers and authors discuss the importance and power of
book bloggers/vloggers.

About the Speculative Fiction Showcase

We are a blog about all things indie science fiction, fantasy and horror. Read interviews with and guest posts by spec fic writers and keep current on news from the SFF world and the latest spec-fic releases.